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"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything"
Mark Twain

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Good afternoon, it's still cold here on the west coast, but I remain confident that summer is coming. Of that I am sure. I am less sure of most other things in my life. And I'm becoming less and less confident that "leaders" in the American financial services sector can be called leaders.

If leadership is about helping navigate people through difficult times, the senior executives at AIG would be dismal failures. Cornered by fear and greed they appear to have developed a bunker mentality that says, we'll protect our own, at the cost of their credibility, and their integrity. They have fallen into the trap of legalism around the employment contracts that they appear almost desperate to honour, while not honouring the fact that such incompetence, carelessness and poor decision making in most other environments would result in terminations.

Let's then take a look at ourselves and our organizations. Are we so loyal to some in our organization that we would not terminate them? Does our corporate culture honour integrity as well as financial performance? If our organization made some fundamental errors, what would we do?

I trust that such events never happen in your organization, but let's make sure that we take lessons, even from such terrible operators.

I hope you have a wonderful and creative week.